Podcasts about clarksdale mississippi

Merging onto The Blues Trail from the Civil Rights Trail and the Emmett Till Memorial was effortless, and necessary. We've heard that when life gets heavy, The Blues can soothe woes. It was almost Opening Day of the annual Clarksdale Juke Joint Festival, and we needed to blow off some steam. The post Civil Rights Trail – Chapter Three: Juke Joint Festival – Clarksdale, Mississippi appeared first on Living In Beauty.

Hosted by @Leo_dynamite & special guest host @Djwrightful. On this episode, we sat down with the multitalented serial entrepreneur Boyice James. We discussed his deep southern roots, and how growing up in the Mississippi Delta helped shape him. BJ also details what it was like going from small town Clarksdale Mississippi to Nashville where he attended Tennessee State University. This episode is definitely a reminder how small towns can produce big dreams and aspirations. We spoke about the major growth Nashville has seen over the last 10-15 years in relations to business. As an entrepreneur it is vital to know when it's time to pivot, and BJ has done just that with his latest business ventures which include “James Consulting Firm” and the “James Bereavement Concierge”.

Universal Studios Orlando makes an entire attraction that mimics the tale of Robert Johnson, who's story of selling his soul to the devil in exchange for the mastery of blues at the intersection of route 61 and 49 in Clarksdale Mississippi, has continued to be told by folks to this day as they welcome their audiences into hell. We take a look at the question of whether or not someone can actually sell their soul.  True Hollywood Hauntings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ3TfeoDjB0 

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Interviewing the Legends I'm your host Ray Shasho. Charles Wright was born in Clarksdale Mississippi, where he grew up and was musically inclined by playing the guitar and singing in several doo-wop groups, including, The Twilighters, The Shield, and The Gallahads. Wright briefly worked as A&R Director for Del-Fi Records and was responsible for the hit recording of "Those Oldies But Goodies (Remind Me of You)" by Little Caesar and the Romans in 1961. By 1964, Wright formed his own band called Charles Wright & the Wright Sounds, which included John Raynford, and Daryl Dragon, the "Captain" of Captain & Tennille. Wright added more members to the group, and they became known as the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, and they played in several venues across Los Angeles. In the 1970s the band was best known for their world-renowned hit, "Express Yourself.” It was written by Wright and distributed by Warner Bros. TM, where it would hit #3 and #12 on the R&B and Pop charts, respectively. Another hit record under Wright's reign was Do Your Thing, which set the stage for a 1970s pornographic study of Boogie Nights. To date, Wright's songs have been covered by legendary artists around the globe. During the rise of Hip-Hop in the 1980s, many rap artists sampled chunks of funk from Wright's wax, including N.W.A. and their smash track, "Express Yourself" Brand Nubian Funk, Naughty By Nature, Gang Starr, and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs also gleaned inspiration from Wright's work. PLEASE WELCOME LEGENDARY SOUL/R&B/FUNK/ SINGER/SONGWRITER AND MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST CHARLES WRIGHT TO INTERVIEWING THE LEGENDS …   WATCH FOR THE BRAND-NEW ALBUM BY CHARLES WRIGHT COMING SOON! AND PURCHASE THE RECENT RELEASE BY CHARLES WRIGHT ‘TAKING IT BACK' AT  Amazon.com   Also Up: From Where We've Come An Eventful Journey A BOOK By Charles Wright author "UP" contains historical moments, where the reader will experience inserts of the author's life long before he gained his status as a musical legend. And like his music, Wrights' story is a historical account of events that could only be told in his own personal and unique style. Wright's book is about a young boy and his family's trials and tribulations on a cotton plantation owned by a cruel sharecropper named Edward Miles, who was born with an unfair advantage, which he uses to dominate his subjects. At the critical age of eight, the boy's father demanded he pick no less than a hundred pounds a day, which according to the author, he has yet to be able to deliver. But any time he failed, he faced yet another one of his father's vicious whippings. His father was involved with the cruel hearted landowner, who owned four hundred acres of fertile land, which he and his family were obligated to work 40 acres of. This, of course, called for an oversized family, which at that time was a sharecropper's dream. The beatings continued practically on a daily basis and continued even after the family relocated to California due to the fact that his father had developed a habit of taking his personal frustrations out on the boy. During the late forties and early fifties, his parents decided to opt out of the cotton business for good, but soon realized Mr. Miles was not so willing to let go. They plotted a scheme and leaving the plantation, they moved into Clarksdale, but only to realize how relentless the old sharecropper actually was. So in an effort to subdue the family, Mr. Miles used his influence among other white southerners to deny the boy's father employment. Their saga continued due to one incident after another until finally, the child's mother sought help from her oldest daughter, who'd already moved out of state. The rest is history. His story takes too many twists and turns to explain in a brief synopsis, yet in the end it has a surprisingly pleasant way of resolving itself.   FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT CHARLES WRIGHT VISIT https://expressyourself.net/ Official website www.facebook.com/charleswrightmusic FACEBOOK www.youtube.com/user/charleswrightz1 YouTube https://open.spotify.com/artist/6fN2KrVTKQmaJPNWfIiIuh?si=6yf8nhONRXC296guwV128w&nd=1 Spotify   Discography CHARLES WRIGHT Singles Act   Title Release   Year Charlie Wright "Help Yourself" / "Number One" (1966) Charles Wright         "(I'm Living On) Borrowed Time" / "Keep Saying (You Don't Love Nobody)" (1966) Charles Wright         "Soul Train" / "Run Jody Run" (1972) Charles Wright         "You Gotta Know Whatcha Doin'" / "Here Comes the Sun" (1972) Charles Wright         "(Well I'm) Doin' What Cums Naturally" Part 1 / "(Well I'm) Doin' What Cums Naturally" Part 2 (1973) Charles Wright         "You Threw It All Away" / "The Weight Of Hate"          (1973) Charles Wright         "Is It Real?" / "Don't Rush Tomorrow" (1975) Charles Wright         "You Gotta Know Whatcha Doin" / "Here Comes The Sun" Happiness (2014) Just Fine (2020)   CHARLES WRIGHT Albums Act   Title   Year Charles Wright         Rhythm And Poetry (1972) Charles Wright         Doing What Comes Naturally (1973) Charles Wright         Ninety Day Cycle People (1974) Charles Wright         A Lil' Encouragement (1975) Charles Wright of The Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band Going To The Party          (1997) Charles Wright         Music For The Times We Live In (2002) Charles Wright of The Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band High Maintenance Woman (2003) Charles Wright of The Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band with The Gallahads          My Love Affair With Doo-Wop (2004) Charles Wright         Finally Got It... Wright (2007)          Music For The Times We Live In (2007) Rhythm and Poetry (Remastered & Expanded) (2007) Something to Make You Feel Good (2016) Taking It Back (2021) A Little Bit of Everything (2023) Coming soon!   As Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band Album    Year Express Yourself (1970) You're So Beautiful (1971)     Support us!

South Australian harmonica/percussionist Bobby Blues joins me this week to share his musical journey for the BAND IT ABOUT - Podcast Series. Bobby whose given name is Greg Carmody, received his first harmonica when he was 8 years old, he played with it for a while and then put it away. It wasn't until he was 21 that he rediscovered that harmonica in a cupboard in his room, and this time he decided to teach himself how to play it. He joined his first band 'The Toe Jammers' in 1982, who changed their name to 'The Global Artichokes' in 1984. In 1986 he joined 'The String Breakers and continued to play with them until 1992 when he met Russell Stewart who asked him to join his band the 'Blu Stu Band', which was not only the start of a long-term association, but it was also the birth of Bobby Blues! The Blu Stu Band became The Harmonics - Funky Swinging Rhythm and Blues Band in 2008, and he has remained with this band ever since. Bobby also has a recording band and has recently released a couple of original songs "Rooster Blues" and "Teddy's Juke Joint." Career highlights include; In 2013 Bobby was invited to play with Dan Aykroyd who was in Sydney to promote his Crystal Head vodka at the Rock Lily Bar. In 2015 whilst vising the USA he played in New Orleans with Luther Kent (Blood Sweat & Tears) at Hotel Monteleone, Willie Lockett & the Blues Crewe at the Vasso Blues Club, Mark Muleman Massey at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale Mississippi, and with various musicians at Teddy's Juke Joint in Baton Rouge. Music; "Band It About" theme song, written and recorded by Catherine Lambert and Michael Bryant. Outro "Rooster Blues" written by Bobby Blues, Bobby Blues – Vocals and Harmonica, Tyler Venter - Slide Guitar, Milush Piochaud - Bass Guitar, Jack Strempel - Keyboard, and Angus Mason - Drums. Links; all of the BAND IT ABOUT - Podcast Series links can be found here: https://linktr.ee/banditaboutpodcastseries Bobby Blues YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/bobbyblues1000 where you can watch the videos that he directed, produced and edited. https://www.facebook.com/TheHarmonicsFunkyBluesBand/ Thanks for listening. Di Spillane BAND IT ABOUT - Podcast Series Host/Creator/Editor. #banditaboutpodcastseries #banditabout #bobbyblues #theharmonicsfunkyswingingrhythmandbluesband #roosterblues #musicinterviews #musicpodcast #bluesharmonica #harmonica #hohnerharmonica #bluesmusicians #adelaidesouthaustralia #unescocityofmusic #adelaidemusicians --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dianne-spillane/message

Sam Cooke Dec 11 1964 Clarksdale Mississippi was shot by a hotel manager. His accuser was sentenced for prostitution and second degree murder in a another case later in 1979. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/cassandra711/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cassandra711/support

Hi, this is Sandy, thanks for joining me for this week's episode. I'm so excited to be able to introduce you to three terrific musical guests. Grammy Award-winning music legend CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE is renowned worldwide as a master harmonica player, a seasoned, truth-telling vocalist and an original songwriter rooted deep in the blues tradition. He's won 14 Blues Music Awards, been nominated for six Grammys, and received multiple Lifetime Achievement Awards. With a new album out now, I caught up with Charlie in Clarksdale Mississippi and discovered a humble, down to earth and extremely talented gentleman. They were a family band from Florida; siblings Carter, Eddie, Rose and Billie Jo Cornelius and were the toast of the town in 1972 with a song that climbed the charts right around the world. The CORNELIUS BROTHERS AND SISTER ROSE imploded though after they tasted success. Rose shares their story with us this week. Who could forget British band, THE FOUNDATIONS? Their smash hit, 'Build Me Up Buttercup' took the world by storm and remains a firm favourite for many people the world over. The band started out in the late 60's as a 12-piece group and made their mark as one of the first multi racial acts to perform in London. Founding member ALAN WARNER tells us all about the band's incredible journey. Like what you hear? Perhaps you'd like to request a guest? Simply send me an email - sandy@abreathoffreshair.com.au And don't forget to take a look at my website www.abreathoffreshair.com.au

Hosted by @Leo_dynamite & @Cmrpromotions. Also with special guest host @O_4ward. On this episode we sat down with the hilarious Renard Hirsch (@renardcomedy), and Sleezy (@deric_sleezy). If you like funny then sit back and enjoy as we go down memory lane about the evolution of Nashville comedy. How Renard gained his steam in the comedy world and even how he helped jumpstart the Wisecracks Comedy brand. We also touched on the “Infamous Road-Trip” to Clarksdale Mississippi which includes comedian Carl Burrell & many more funny stories.

Clarksdale is a city in Mississippi, and is located along the Sunflower River. Many African-American musicians developed the blues here, and took this original American music with them to Chicago and other northern cities during the Great Migration. With that being said, the blues brings us to one of Clarksdale's most famous stories, Robert Johnson and the Devil's Crossroads. As according to local legend, it's the spot where Robert Johnson made his deal with the devil to play the blues like none other.[FOLLOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA & MORE]LINKS to EVERYTHING: solo.to/southernoddpodHOST JARED ORDIS: solo.to/jaredordis[ADDITONAL INFORMATION]Questions or Business Inquiry, Email Us @ ordisstudios@gmail.comResearched was used for this episode of Southern Oddities, and we couldn't have made it possible without the journalism and dedication from these awesome sources of information:Roadside America [Tip 26919] - American Blues Scene [Devils Crossroads Owning Pieve of Robert Johnson Legacy] - Roadtrippers [Clarksdake MS Devils Crossroads] - Atlas Obscura [Clarksdale Crossroads] - Wikipedia [Crossroads] - Wikipedia [Robert Johnson] - Wikipedia [Clarksdale, Mississippi]"Southern Oddities" is created & produced by Jared Ordis, an Ordis Studios production. This show is part of the Ordis Studios Network Copyright © 2022 by Ordis Studiossolo.to/ordisstudios

Roger Stolles describes to Steve Bowers how you begin life in Ohio and end up in Clarksdale, Mississippi in this July 28, 2021 interview on Blue Suede Forever ..

This week Record Store Radio features Shelley Ritter, the executive director of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale Mississippi, the first museum in the world dedicated entirely to the blues.  She talks about the history and the future of the blues and the cultural importance of the city of Clarksdale.

This week we talk about Clarksdale Mississippi.  https://www.visitclarksdale.com  http://www.deltarising.com/Delta_Rising/home.html  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarksdale,_Mississippi 

Zack, Dan, and Evan drive down to the crossroads to meet the devil and Zack gets caught with his pants down while Evan cries... a lot.

Dooner’s World – Episode 78 – Sean The Bad Apple (Guitarist from Clarksdale, Mississippi) · Owner of Bad Apple Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi · Growing up listing to the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin· Getting into the Blues and moving to Mississippi· Meeting and learning from Jack Owens and Bud Spires in Bentonia, Mississippi · Playing North Mississippi Hill Style country Blues · Announcement - Dooner’s World is now a part of the Count Zero Family!! Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=39941006&fan_landing=true)

Looking for inspiration to write songs for my new album, I decided to travel to the southern United States in November of 2012 and follow The Blues Trail. Walking in Memphis! Sun Studio! Elvis Presley's ain't! Watching Al Green preach the gospel! Sleeping in Robert Plant's bed! Playing the blues in Clarksdale Mississippi!! Lounging at The Po' Monkey! Friars Point, Mama! Take a trip with me... --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/david-gogo-podcast/message

Good friends, I took a trip to the Mississippi delta and here is what I found.Enjoy! DubbyOur arrival at Robert Johnson's grave:https://www.instagram.com/p/B3lFLwrg_mz/?igshid=3nkc6ez6uutgMore at :https:/dubonline.netSupport the show (https://www.paypal.me/virtualtips)

Bubba O'Keefe has the spirit of the Mississippi Delta running through his veins. What stories does he have to tell about the Crossroads? Why is Clarksdale a great place to visit and/or start a business? And what are the kinds of people who succeed here? Bubba has seen it all...and he shares his stories on today's episode. You can learn more about Bubba and the Clarksdale, Mississippi at https://www.visitclarksdale.com/    

Clarksdale, Mississippi is home to the world-famous Crossroads...where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar chops. Why did Robert and Lucy decide to start a hostel in Clarksdale after succeeding with their property in New Orleans? What interesting stories live within the four walls of the Auberge? All of this and more in today's episode. You can learn more about Robert and the Auberge Hostel at https://aubergehostels.com/

Chicago's crime solution. Chicago Mayor Lightfoot should pay gangbangers and drug dealers to leave. Clarksdale Mississippi Mayor Chuck Epsy has a great plan for the crime rate and paying criminals $10,000 to leave and start a new life. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/king.williams/support

Welcome to episode eleven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Both "Rocket 88" and the Howlin' Wolf tune used here are on Memphis Vol. 3 - Recordings from the Legendary Sun Studios, the third in a series of ludicrously cheap ten-CD box sets (this one currently selling on Amazon for £12!) which between them cover every single and B-side recorded in Sam Phillips' studio in the 1950s. Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick is the definitive biography of Phillips. A content warning, though -- the book contains racial slurs, always in quoted speech and used to illustrate historical racism, but some may still find that upsetting. Ike Turner wrote an autobiography, but I'm not going to recommend a book which exists solely to minimise his abuse of his wife. However, Turner was also interviewed by ghostwriter Kurt Loder for Tina Turner's autobiography I, Tina, and his description of the recording of "Rocket 88" is in there, so if you want to hear his take on the story, buy that. Content Note As you may have noticed from the above, this episode deals with Ike Turner, a man who is now as widely known for his spousal abuse as for his music. I mention this disclaimer episode in the podcast, and everything there goes for this episode. This episode is about the music, and about music he made before his horrific acts, but I don't want to give the impression I'm condoning or ignoring those. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There is, of course, no actual "first rock and roll record", and if there is, it's not "Rocket 88". But nonetheless, "Rocket 88" has been officially anointed "the first rock and roll record ever made" by generations of white male music journalists, and so we need to talk about it. And it is, actually, quite a good record of its type, even if not especially innovative.   Before I talk about this, go and listen if you haven't already to the disclaimer episode I did after episode two (I'll link it in the show notes) about my attitudes towards misogynistic abusers who happen also to have played on some great records. I don't want to repeat all that here, but at the same time I definitely want to go on record that I'm not an admirer of Ike Turner. Because as it is, here at the official "beginning of rock" according to thousands of attempts to set a canon, we also have the beginning of rock being created by abusive men. Literally at the beginning in this case -- Ike Turner plays the opening piano part. And here we see how impossible it is to untangle the work of people like him from this history, as that piano part is one that would echo down the ages, becoming part of the bloodstream of popular music.   Anyway, enough about that.   To talk about "Rocket 88" we first have to talk about the Honeydrippers, and about the Liggins Brothers.   Joe Liggins was a piano player, with a small-time band called Sammy Franklin and the California Rhythm Rascals. In 1942, Liggins wrote a song called "The Honeydripper", which the California Rhythm Rascals used to perform quite regularly. It's a pleasant, enjoyable, boogie-flavoured jump band piece, which had a very catchy, unusual, riff, based loosely around the riff from "Shortenin' Bread". It was mostly just an excuse for soloing and extended improvisation -- sometimes it could last for fifteen minutes or more when performed live -- but it was surprisingly catchy nonetheless.   Liggins believed it had some commercial potential, so he went to his boss, Franklin, with a deal. He said he thought it could be a big hit, and they should make a record of it. If Sammy Franklin would pay $500 towards the cost of making the record, Liggins would give Franklin half the composer rights for the song. Sammy Franklin turned him down, and Liggins believed in his song so much that he quit the band and formed his own jump band, which he named after the song. Eventually, three years later, Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers went into the studio and recorded "The Honeydripper Parts 1 & 2" for a small indie label, Exclusive Records, and it was released in April 1945.   [Excerpt: "The Honeydripper" by Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers]   It doesn't sound that much now -- pleasant enough, but hardly the most exceptional record ever. But that's with seventy-three years of hindsight. It went to number thirteen on the pop charts -- which is a remarkable feat for an R&B record in itself -- but its performance on the R&B charts was just ludicrous. It went to number one on the race charts (later the R&B charts) for eighteen weeks straight, from September 1945 through January 1946. The only reason it didn't stay at the top for longer was because the record label simply couldn't keep up with the demand, and it was replaced at number one by Louis Jordan, but at number two was Jimmie Lunceford playing... "The Honeydripper"   [Excerpt: Jimmie Lunceford's version of "The Honeydripper"].   At number three, meanwhile, was Roosevelt Sykes playing... "The Honeydripper". Later in 1946, Cab Calloway also had a number three hit with the song.   Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers' version, alone, sold over two million copies in 1945 and 46, and it still, seventy-three years later, is joint holder of the title for longest stay at number one in the race or R&B charts ("Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" is the other joint holder, and that came a few months later). It's likely that nobody will ever beat that record. "The Honeydripper" was a sensation.   Meanwhile the California Rhythm Rascals had renamed themselves Sammy Franklin and his Atomics, in an attempt to sound more up to date and modern, with the atomic bomb having so recently gone off. They recorded their own version of "The Honeydripper". It sank without trace -- but you'll remember from last week that that record launched the production career of Ralph Bass. "The Honeydripper" made money and careers for everyone in the music industry, except for Sammy Franklin.   Sammy Franklin may not have been the single most unwise person in the history of rock and roll -- he didn't turn down Elvis or quit the Beatles or anything like that -- but still, one has to imagine that he spent the whole rest of his life regretting that he hadn't just spent that five hundred dollars.   Joe Liggins never had another success as big as "The Honeydripper", but he had a few minor successes to go along with it, and that was enough for him to give his brother Jimmy a job as the band's driver -- at that time, it was *very* rare for bands to have actual employees, rather than doing their own driving and carrying their own instruments, and for Jimmy it was certainly an improvement on his previous career as a boxer under the name Kid Zulu.   But Jimmy also played a bit of guitar, and so he decided, inspired by his brother's success, to try his hand at his own music career, and he formed his own jump band, the Drops of Joy.   The Drops of Joy signed up to Specialty Records, a label we'll be hearing a *lot* about in upcoming episodes. But the Drops of Joy would normally not be a band that we'd be talking about. They weren't the most imaginative or innovative band by a long way, and they only had minor hits. Their songs were mostly generic boogies, called things like "Saturday Night Boogie Woogie Man" or "Night Life Boogie" -- all perfectly good music of its type, but nothing that set the world on fire.   But one B-side, "Cadillac Boogie" was, indirectly, responsible for a great deal of the music that would follow...   [Excerpt "Cadillac Boogie" by Jimmy Liggins and the Drops of Joy]   To see why "Cadillac Boogie" was a big influence, we now need to turn to Sam Phillips. It's safe to say that he's one of the two or three most important people in the history of rock and roll music -- and it's also safe to say that even if rock and roll had never happened at all, we'd still be talking about Sam Phillips because of his influence on country and blues music. He may well have been the single most important record producer of the 1950s -- he's as important to the history of American music as anyone who ever lived.   Phillips had started out as a DJ, but had moved sideways from there into recording bands for radio sessions. He had very strong opinions about the way things should sound, and he was willing to work hard to get the sound the way he wanted it. In particular, when he recorded big bands for sessions, he would mic the rhythm section far more than was traditional -- when you heard a big band recorded by Sam Phillips, you could hear the guitar and the bass in a way you couldn't when you heard that band on the records.   He had a real ear for sound, but he also had an ear for *performance*.   Like a lot of the men we're dealing with at this point, Sam Phillips was a white man who was motivated by a deeply-felt anger at racial injustice, which expressed itself as a belief that if other white people could just see the humanity, and the talent, in black people the way he could, the world would be a much better place. The racial attitudes of people like him can seem a little patronising these days, as if the problems in America were just down to a few people's feelings, and if those feelings could be changed everything would be better, but given the utterly horrendous attitudes expressed by the people around him, Phillips was at least partly right -- if he could get his fellow white people to just stop being vicious towards black people, well, that wouldn't fix all the problems by any means, but it would have been a good start.   He was also someone who was very much of the opinion that if a problem needed fixing, he should try to fix it himself. During the Cuban missile crisis he decided that since Castro seemed a reasonable sort of person and a good progressive like Phillips himself, the whole thing could be sorted out if a decent American just had a one-to-one chat with him. And since no-one else was doing that, he decided he might as well do it himself. So he phoned Cuba, and while he couldn't get through to Fidel Castro himself, he did get through to Castro's brother Raul, and had a long conversation with him. History does not relate whether it was Sam Phillips' intervention that saved the world from nuclear war.   And what Sam Phillips thought he could do to stop the evil of racism -- and also to improve the world in other ways -- was to capture the music that the black people he saw around him in Memphis were making. The world seemed to him to be full of talented, idiosyncratic, people who were making music like nothing else he had heard.   And so he started Memphis Recording Services, with the help of his mistress Marion Keisker, who acted as his assistant and was herself a popular radio presenter. Both kept their jobs at the radio station while starting the business, and they tried to get the business on a sound financial footing by recording things like weddings and funerals (yes, funerals, they'd mic up the funeral home and get a recording of the service which they'd put on an acetate disc -- apparently this was a popular service).   But the real purpose of the business was to be somewhere where real musicians could come and record. Phillips didn't have a record label, but he had arrangements with a couple of small labels to send them recordings, and sometimes those labels would put the recordings out. Musicians of all kinds would come into Memphis Recording Services, and Phillips would spend hours trying to get their sound onto disc and, later, tape. Not trying to perfect it, but trying to get the most authentic version of that person's artistry onto the tape.   In 1951 Memphis Recording Services hadn't been open that long, and Phillips had barely recorded anything worth a listen -- but he *had* made some recordings with a local DJ called Riley King, who had recently started going by the name "Blues Boy", or just "B.B." for short. To my mind they're actually some of King's best material -- much more my kind of thing than the later recordings that made his name. Here, for example, is one of those recordings that wasn't released at the time, but has made compilations later -- "Pray For You":   [excerpt: B.B. King "Pray For You"]   That was the kind of music that Sam Phillips liked, and it's the kind of thing I like too. The piano player there, incidentally, was a young man called Johnny Ace, about whom we'll hear a lot more later.   A couple of years earlier, King had met a young musician in Clarksdale Mississippi called Ike Turner, who led a big band called the Top Hatters. Turner had sat in with King on the piano and had impressed King with his ability, and King had even stopped over a couple of nights at Turner's house. The two hadn't stayed in touch, but they both liked each other.   The Top Hatters had later split up into two bands -- there was the Dukes of Swing, who played classy big band music, and the Kings of Rhythm, who were a jump band after the Louis Jordan fashion, led by Turner. One day, the Kings of Rhythm were coming back from a gig when they noticed a large number of cars parked outside a venue which had a poster advertising one "B.B. King". Ike Turner had noticed that name on posters before, but didn't know who it was, but thought he should check out why there were so many people wanting to see him.   The band stopped and went inside, and discovered that B.B. King was Ike Turner's old acquaintance Riley. Turner asked King if his band could get up and play a number, and King let him, and was hugely impressed, telling Turner that he should make records. Turner said he'd like to, but he had no idea how one actually went about making a record.   King said that the way he did it was there was a guy in Memphis called Sam who recorded him. King would call Sam up and tell him to give Turner a call on Monday. Monday came around, and indeed Sam Phillips did call Ike Turner on the telephone, and asked when they could come up to record. "Straight away", Ike replied, and they set off -- five men, two saxes, a guitar, and a drum kit in a single car, with the guitar amp and bass drum strapped to the roof.   The drive from Mississippi to Memphis was not without incident -- they got arrested and fined, ostensibly for a traffic violation but actually for being black in the deep South, and they also got a flat tyre, and when they changed it the guitar amp fell on the road.   At least, that's one story as to what happened to the guitar amp -- like everything when it comes to this music, there are three or four different stories told by different people, but that's definitely one of them.   Anyway, when they got to the studio, and got their gear set up, the amplifier made a strange sound. The band were horrified -- their big break, and it was all going to be destroyed because their amp was making this horrible dirty sound. The speaker cone had been damaged.   Sam Phillips, however, was very much not horrified. He was delighted. He got some brown paper from the restaurant next door to stuff inside as a temporary repair, but said that the damaged amp would sound different, and different, to Sam Phillips at least, was always good.   The song they chose to record that day was one that was written by the saxophone player, Jackie Brenston.   Well, I say written by… as with so many of the songs we've seen here, the song was not so much written as remembered (as indeed that line is -- I remembered it from Leslie Halliwell, talking about Talbot Rothwell's scripts for the Carry On films, so I thought I should give it credit here). Specifically, he was remembering "Cadillac Boogie", as you can tell if you listen to it for even a few seconds:   [insert a chunk of Rocket 88]   Now the main difference in the songwriting is simply the car that's being talked about -- the 88 was a new, exciting, model, and Brenston made the song more hip and current as a result. But *musically* there are a few things of note here.   Firstly, there's the piano part, written and played by Ike Turner -- that part is one that Little Richard adored, to the point that he copied it on the intro to “Good Golly Miss Molly”. Compare and contrast; here's the intro to “Rocket 88”:   [intro to Rocket 88]   and here's Little Richard playing “Good Golly Miss Molly”:   [intro to Good Golly Miss Molly]   There's another difference as well -- the guitar sound. There's distortion all over it, thanks to that cone.   Now, this probably won't even have been something that anyone listening at the time noticed -- if you're listening in the context of early fifties R&B, on the poor-quality 78 RPM discs that the music was released on, you'd probably think that buzzing boogie line was a baritone sax -- the line it's playing is the kind of thing that a horn would normally play, and the distortion sounds the same way as many of the distorted sax lines at the time did. But that was enough that when white music critics in the seventies were looking for a "first rock and roll record", they latched on to this one -- because in the seventies rock and roll *meant* distorted guitar.   When the record came out, Ike Turner was horrified -- because he'd assumed it would be released as by Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm, but instead it was under the name "Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats". And the record was successful enough to make Jackie Brenston decide to quit the Kings of Rhythm and go solo. He released a few more singles, mostly along the same lines as Rocket 88, but they did nothing.   Brenston's solo career fizzled out quite quickly, and he joined the backing band for Lowell Fulson, the blues star. After a couple of years with Fulson, he returned to play with Ike Turner's band. He stayed with Turner from 1955 through 1962, a sideman once more, and Turner wouldn't let Brenston sing his hit on stage -- he was never going to be upstaged by his sax player again.   Eventually Jackie Brenston became an alcoholic, and from 1963 until his death in 1979, he worked as a part-time truck driver, never seeing any recognition for his part in starting rock and roll.   But "Rocket 88" had repercussions for a lot of other people, even if it was only a one-off hit for Brenston. For Ike Turner, after "Rocket 88" was released, half of his band quit and stayed with Brenston, so for a long time he was without a full band. He started to work for Phillips as a talent scout and musician, and it was Turner who brought Phillips several artists, including the artist who Phillips later claimed was the greatest artist and greatest human being he ever worked with -- Howlin' Wolf.   [excerpt "How Many More Years" -- version from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lTpcKnp-NQ ]   That's a recording that was made at Phillips' studio, with Turner on piano. Phillips licensed several singles by Howlin' Wolf and others to Chess Records, but then the Chess brothers, the owners of that label, used contractual shenanigans to cut Phillips out of the loop and record the Wolf directly. So Phillips made a resolution to start his own record label, where no-one would steal his artists. Sun Records was born out of this frustration. Meanwhile, Ike Turner resolved that he would never again see his name removed from the credits for a record he was on. When he got a new Kings of Rhythm together, he switched from playing piano, where you're sat at the side of the stage, to playing guitar, where you can be up front and in the spotlight And when the Kings of Rhythm got a new singer, Annie-Mae Bullock, Turner made sure he would always have equal billing, by giving her his surname as a stage name, so any records she made would be by the new act, "Ike and Tina Turner".   And finally, "Rocket 88" was going to have a profound effect on the career of one man who would later make a big difference to rock and roll. The lead singer of the country band the Saddlemen -- a singer who was best known as a champion yodeller -- was also working as a DJ for a small Pennsylvania station, and he noticed that Louis Jordan records were popular among the country audience, and he decided to start incorporating a Louis Jordan style in his own music   But Jordan's records were so popular with a crossover audience that when the Saddlemen came to make their first records in this new style, they chose to cover something by someone other than Jordan – someone that hadn't crossed over into the country market yet. And so they chose to record "Rocket 88", which had been a big R&B hit but hadn't broken through into the white audience. Their version of the song is *also* credited by some as the first rock and roll record. But it'll be a few weeks until Bill Haley becomes a full part of our story...

Welcome to episode eleven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Both “Rocket 88” and the Howlin’ Wolf tune used here are on Memphis Vol. 3 – Recordings from the Legendary Sun Studios, the third in a series of ludicrously cheap ten-CD box sets (this one currently selling on Amazon for £12!) which between them cover every single and B-side recorded in Sam Phillips’ studio in the 1950s. Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll by Peter Guralnick is the definitive biography of Phillips. A content warning, though — the book contains racial slurs, always in quoted speech and used to illustrate historical racism, but some may still find that upsetting. Ike Turner wrote an autobiography, but I’m not going to recommend a book which exists solely to minimise his abuse of his wife. However, Turner was also interviewed by ghostwriter Kurt Loder for Tina Turner’s autobiography I, Tina, and his description of the recording of “Rocket 88” is in there, so if you want to hear his take on the story, buy that. Content Note As you may have noticed from the above, this episode deals with Ike Turner, a man who is now as widely known for his spousal abuse as for his music. I mention this disclaimer episode in the podcast, and everything there goes for this episode. This episode is about the music, and about music he made before his horrific acts, but I don’t want to give the impression I’m condoning or ignoring those. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There is, of course, no actual “first rock and roll record”, and if there is, it’s not “Rocket 88”. But nonetheless, “Rocket 88” has been officially anointed “the first rock and roll record ever made” by generations of white male music journalists, and so we need to talk about it. And it is, actually, quite a good record of its type, even if not especially innovative.   Before I talk about this, go and listen if you haven’t already to the disclaimer episode I did after episode two (I’ll link it in the show notes) about my attitudes towards misogynistic abusers who happen also to have played on some great records. I don’t want to repeat all that here, but at the same time I definitely want to go on record that I’m not an admirer of Ike Turner. Because as it is, here at the official “beginning of rock” according to thousands of attempts to set a canon, we also have the beginning of rock being created by abusive men. Literally at the beginning in this case — Ike Turner plays the opening piano part. And here we see how impossible it is to untangle the work of people like him from this history, as that piano part is one that would echo down the ages, becoming part of the bloodstream of popular music.   Anyway, enough about that.   To talk about “Rocket 88” we first have to talk about the Honeydrippers, and about the Liggins Brothers.   Joe Liggins was a piano player, with a small-time band called Sammy Franklin and the California Rhythm Rascals. In 1942, Liggins wrote a song called “The Honeydripper”, which the California Rhythm Rascals used to perform quite regularly. It’s a pleasant, enjoyable, boogie-flavoured jump band piece, which had a very catchy, unusual, riff, based loosely around the riff from “Shortenin’ Bread”. It was mostly just an excuse for soloing and extended improvisation — sometimes it could last for fifteen minutes or more when performed live — but it was surprisingly catchy nonetheless.   Liggins believed it had some commercial potential, so he went to his boss, Franklin, with a deal. He said he thought it could be a big hit, and they should make a record of it. If Sammy Franklin would pay $500 towards the cost of making the record, Liggins would give Franklin half the composer rights for the song. Sammy Franklin turned him down, and Liggins believed in his song so much that he quit the band and formed his own jump band, which he named after the song. Eventually, three years later, Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers went into the studio and recorded “The Honeydripper Parts 1 & 2” for a small indie label, Exclusive Records, and it was released in April 1945.   [Excerpt: “The Honeydripper” by Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers]   It doesn’t sound that much now — pleasant enough, but hardly the most exceptional record ever. But that’s with seventy-three years of hindsight. It went to number thirteen on the pop charts — which is a remarkable feat for an R&B record in itself — but its performance on the R&B charts was just ludicrous. It went to number one on the race charts (later the R&B charts) for eighteen weeks straight, from September 1945 through January 1946. The only reason it didn’t stay at the top for longer was because the record label simply couldn’t keep up with the demand, and it was replaced at number one by Louis Jordan, but at number two was Jimmie Lunceford playing… “The Honeydripper”   [Excerpt: Jimmie Lunceford’s version of “The Honeydripper”].   At number three, meanwhile, was Roosevelt Sykes playing… “The Honeydripper”. Later in 1946, Cab Calloway also had a number three hit with the song.   Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers’ version, alone, sold over two million copies in 1945 and 46, and it still, seventy-three years later, is joint holder of the title for longest stay at number one in the race or R&B charts (“Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” is the other joint holder, and that came a few months later). It’s likely that nobody will ever beat that record. “The Honeydripper” was a sensation.   Meanwhile the California Rhythm Rascals had renamed themselves Sammy Franklin and his Atomics, in an attempt to sound more up to date and modern, with the atomic bomb having so recently gone off. They recorded their own version of “The Honeydripper”. It sank without trace — but you’ll remember from last week that that record launched the production career of Ralph Bass. “The Honeydripper” made money and careers for everyone in the music industry, except for Sammy Franklin.   Sammy Franklin may not have been the single most unwise person in the history of rock and roll — he didn’t turn down Elvis or quit the Beatles or anything like that — but still, one has to imagine that he spent the whole rest of his life regretting that he hadn’t just spent that five hundred dollars.   Joe Liggins never had another success as big as “The Honeydripper”, but he had a few minor successes to go along with it, and that was enough for him to give his brother Jimmy a job as the band’s driver — at that time, it was *very* rare for bands to have actual employees, rather than doing their own driving and carrying their own instruments, and for Jimmy it was certainly an improvement on his previous career as a boxer under the name Kid Zulu.   But Jimmy also played a bit of guitar, and so he decided, inspired by his brother’s success, to try his hand at his own music career, and he formed his own jump band, the Drops of Joy.   The Drops of Joy signed up to Specialty Records, a label we’ll be hearing a *lot* about in upcoming episodes. But the Drops of Joy would normally not be a band that we’d be talking about. They weren’t the most imaginative or innovative band by a long way, and they only had minor hits. Their songs were mostly generic boogies, called things like “Saturday Night Boogie Woogie Man” or “Night Life Boogie” — all perfectly good music of its type, but nothing that set the world on fire.   But one B-side, “Cadillac Boogie” was, indirectly, responsible for a great deal of the music that would follow…   [Excerpt “Cadillac Boogie” by Jimmy Liggins and the Drops of Joy]   To see why “Cadillac Boogie” was a big influence, we now need to turn to Sam Phillips. It’s safe to say that he’s one of the two or three most important people in the history of rock and roll music — and it’s also safe to say that even if rock and roll had never happened at all, we’d still be talking about Sam Phillips because of his influence on country and blues music. He may well have been the single most important record producer of the 1950s — he’s as important to the history of American music as anyone who ever lived.   Phillips had started out as a DJ, but had moved sideways from there into recording bands for radio sessions. He had very strong opinions about the way things should sound, and he was willing to work hard to get the sound the way he wanted it. In particular, when he recorded big bands for sessions, he would mic the rhythm section far more than was traditional — when you heard a big band recorded by Sam Phillips, you could hear the guitar and the bass in a way you couldn’t when you heard that band on the records.   He had a real ear for sound, but he also had an ear for *performance*.   Like a lot of the men we’re dealing with at this point, Sam Phillips was a white man who was motivated by a deeply-felt anger at racial injustice, which expressed itself as a belief that if other white people could just see the humanity, and the talent, in black people the way he could, the world would be a much better place. The racial attitudes of people like him can seem a little patronising these days, as if the problems in America were just down to a few people’s feelings, and if those feelings could be changed everything would be better, but given the utterly horrendous attitudes expressed by the people around him, Phillips was at least partly right — if he could get his fellow white people to just stop being vicious towards black people, well, that wouldn’t fix all the problems by any means, but it would have been a good start.   He was also someone who was very much of the opinion that if a problem needed fixing, he should try to fix it himself. During the Cuban missile crisis he decided that since Castro seemed a reasonable sort of person and a good progressive like Phillips himself, the whole thing could be sorted out if a decent American just had a one-to-one chat with him. And since no-one else was doing that, he decided he might as well do it himself. So he phoned Cuba, and while he couldn’t get through to Fidel Castro himself, he did get through to Castro’s brother Raul, and had a long conversation with him. History does not relate whether it was Sam Phillips’ intervention that saved the world from nuclear war.   And what Sam Phillips thought he could do to stop the evil of racism — and also to improve the world in other ways — was to capture the music that the black people he saw around him in Memphis were making. The world seemed to him to be full of talented, idiosyncratic, people who were making music like nothing else he had heard.   And so he started Memphis Recording Services, with the help of his mistress Marion Keisker, who acted as his assistant and was herself a popular radio presenter. Both kept their jobs at the radio station while starting the business, and they tried to get the business on a sound financial footing by recording things like weddings and funerals (yes, funerals, they’d mic up the funeral home and get a recording of the service which they’d put on an acetate disc — apparently this was a popular service).   But the real purpose of the business was to be somewhere where real musicians could come and record. Phillips didn’t have a record label, but he had arrangements with a couple of small labels to send them recordings, and sometimes those labels would put the recordings out. Musicians of all kinds would come into Memphis Recording Services, and Phillips would spend hours trying to get their sound onto disc and, later, tape. Not trying to perfect it, but trying to get the most authentic version of that person’s artistry onto the tape.   In 1951 Memphis Recording Services hadn’t been open that long, and Phillips had barely recorded anything worth a listen — but he *had* made some recordings with a local DJ called Riley King, who had recently started going by the name “Blues Boy”, or just “B.B.” for short. To my mind they’re actually some of King’s best material — much more my kind of thing than the later recordings that made his name. Here, for example, is one of those recordings that wasn’t released at the time, but has made compilations later — “Pray For You”:   [excerpt: B.B. King “Pray For You”]   That was the kind of music that Sam Phillips liked, and it’s the kind of thing I like too. The piano player there, incidentally, was a young man called Johnny Ace, about whom we’ll hear a lot more later.   A couple of years earlier, King had met a young musician in Clarksdale Mississippi called Ike Turner, who led a big band called the Top Hatters. Turner had sat in with King on the piano and had impressed King with his ability, and King had even stopped over a couple of nights at Turner’s house. The two hadn’t stayed in touch, but they both liked each other.   The Top Hatters had later split up into two bands — there was the Dukes of Swing, who played classy big band music, and the Kings of Rhythm, who were a jump band after the Louis Jordan fashion, led by Turner. One day, the Kings of Rhythm were coming back from a gig when they noticed a large number of cars parked outside a venue which had a poster advertising one “B.B. King”. Ike Turner had noticed that name on posters before, but didn’t know who it was, but thought he should check out why there were so many people wanting to see him.   The band stopped and went inside, and discovered that B.B. King was Ike Turner’s old acquaintance Riley. Turner asked King if his band could get up and play a number, and King let him, and was hugely impressed, telling Turner that he should make records. Turner said he’d like to, but he had no idea how one actually went about making a record.   King said that the way he did it was there was a guy in Memphis called Sam who recorded him. King would call Sam up and tell him to give Turner a call on Monday. Monday came around, and indeed Sam Phillips did call Ike Turner on the telephone, and asked when they could come up to record. “Straight away”, Ike replied, and they set off — five men, two saxes, a guitar, and a drum kit in a single car, with the guitar amp and bass drum strapped to the roof.   The drive from Mississippi to Memphis was not without incident — they got arrested and fined, ostensibly for a traffic violation but actually for being black in the deep South, and they also got a flat tyre, and when they changed it the guitar amp fell on the road.   At least, that’s one story as to what happened to the guitar amp — like everything when it comes to this music, there are three or four different stories told by different people, but that’s definitely one of them.   Anyway, when they got to the studio, and got their gear set up, the amplifier made a strange sound. The band were horrified — their big break, and it was all going to be destroyed because their amp was making this horrible dirty sound. The speaker cone had been damaged.   Sam Phillips, however, was very much not horrified. He was delighted. He got some brown paper from the restaurant next door to stuff inside as a temporary repair, but said that the damaged amp would sound different, and different, to Sam Phillips at least, was always good.   The song they chose to record that day was one that was written by the saxophone player, Jackie Brenston.   Well, I say written by… as with so many of the songs we’ve seen here, the song was not so much written as remembered (as indeed that line is — I remembered it from Leslie Halliwell, talking about Talbot Rothwell’s scripts for the Carry On films, so I thought I should give it credit here). Specifically, he was remembering “Cadillac Boogie”, as you can tell if you listen to it for even a few seconds:   [insert a chunk of Rocket 88]   Now the main difference in the songwriting is simply the car that’s being talked about — the 88 was a new, exciting, model, and Brenston made the song more hip and current as a result. But *musically* there are a few things of note here.   Firstly, there’s the piano part, written and played by Ike Turner — that part is one that Little Richard adored, to the point that he copied it on the intro to “Good Golly Miss Molly”. Compare and contrast; here’s the intro to “Rocket 88”:   [intro to Rocket 88]   and here’s Little Richard playing “Good Golly Miss Molly”:   [intro to Good Golly Miss Molly]   There’s another difference as well — the guitar sound. There’s distortion all over it, thanks to that cone.   Now, this probably won’t even have been something that anyone listening at the time noticed — if you’re listening in the context of early fifties R&B, on the poor-quality 78 RPM discs that the music was released on, you’d probably think that buzzing boogie line was a baritone sax — the line it’s playing is the kind of thing that a horn would normally play, and the distortion sounds the same way as many of the distorted sax lines at the time did. But that was enough that when white music critics in the seventies were looking for a “first rock and roll record”, they latched on to this one — because in the seventies rock and roll *meant* distorted guitar.   When the record came out, Ike Turner was horrified — because he’d assumed it would be released as by Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm, but instead it was under the name “Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats”. And the record was successful enough to make Jackie Brenston decide to quit the Kings of Rhythm and go solo. He released a few more singles, mostly along the same lines as Rocket 88, but they did nothing.   Brenston’s solo career fizzled out quite quickly, and he joined the backing band for Lowell Fulson, the blues star. After a couple of years with Fulson, he returned to play with Ike Turner’s band. He stayed with Turner from 1955 through 1962, a sideman once more, and Turner wouldn’t let Brenston sing his hit on stage — he was never going to be upstaged by his sax player again.   Eventually Jackie Brenston became an alcoholic, and from 1963 until his death in 1979, he worked as a part-time truck driver, never seeing any recognition for his part in starting rock and roll.   But “Rocket 88” had repercussions for a lot of other people, even if it was only a one-off hit for Brenston. For Ike Turner, after “Rocket 88” was released, half of his band quit and stayed with Brenston, so for a long time he was without a full band. He started to work for Phillips as a talent scout and musician, and it was Turner who brought Phillips several artists, including the artist who Phillips later claimed was the greatest artist and greatest human being he ever worked with — Howlin’ Wolf.   [excerpt “How Many More Years” — version from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lTpcKnp-NQ ]   That’s a recording that was made at Phillips’ studio, with Turner on piano. Phillips licensed several singles by Howlin’ Wolf and others to Chess Records, but then the Chess brothers, the owners of that label, used contractual shenanigans to cut Phillips out of the loop and record the Wolf directly. So Phillips made a resolution to start his own record label, where no-one would steal his artists. Sun Records was born out of this frustration. Meanwhile, Ike Turner resolved that he would never again see his name removed from the credits for a record he was on. When he got a new Kings of Rhythm together, he switched from playing piano, where you’re sat at the side of the stage, to playing guitar, where you can be up front and in the spotlight And when the Kings of Rhythm got a new singer, Annie-Mae Bullock, Turner made sure he would always have equal billing, by giving her his surname as a stage name, so any records she made would be by the new act, “Ike and Tina Turner”.   And finally, “Rocket 88” was going to have a profound effect on the career of one man who would later make a big difference to rock and roll. The lead singer of the country band the Saddlemen — a singer who was best known as a champion yodeller — was also working as a DJ for a small Pennsylvania station, and he noticed that Louis Jordan records were popular among the country audience, and he decided to start incorporating a Louis Jordan style in his own music   But Jordan’s records were so popular with a crossover audience that when the Saddlemen came to make their first records in this new style, they chose to cover something by someone other than Jordan – someone that hadn’t crossed over into the country market yet. And so they chose to record “Rocket 88”, which had been a big R&B hit but hadn’t broken through into the white audience. Their version of the song is *also* credited by some as the first rock and roll record. But it’ll be a few weeks until Bill Haley becomes a full part of our story…

The New Roxy in Clarksdale, Mississippi was built in the 1940's but sat vacant for 30 years until a merchant marine from Seattle named Robin Colonas purchased it in 2008. Robin had been visiting Mississippi off and on for a while, and something about Clarksdale really grabbed a hold of her.  At the time, Robin had no plan for the building other than to try to protect it. It was just an expensive hobby. However, today, the New Roxy is a successful art, music and theater venue.  This is Robin's incredible story about transforming the New Roxy into a new opportunity for the Clarksdale community.

We often underestimate the impact that a small business can have on their community while in reality, small businesses are the main driver of job creation in the United States. One small business has less impact than a major corporation, but as a whole, small businesses create more jobs, create a positive atmosphere within their communities, and create local role models for kids to look up to. One coffee shop in Clarksdale, Mississippi is a perfect example of such a business. Cali Noland and Ben Lewis of Meraki Roasting Company have combined their passions for education, community and business to use their local coffee shop to help teach kids necessary job skills.  With a poverty rate of 40% in Clarksdale, this program is filling an extremely important need for this community. These kids are learning necessary soft skills like time management, that will ultimately help them secure and keep a job in the future. We get into this program and much more in the latest episode of Small Business War Stories.

The Shack Up Inn embodies the intersection between music and cultural tourism. A stay at one of their sharecropper shacks immediately immerses you in the history of plantation life while also immersing you in the live music scene at the birth place of the blues. The Shack Up Inn started nearly 20 years ago as a single sharecropper shack on a plantation in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Tourists interested in seeing what a plantation looked like started asking about renting the shack. Fast forward to today, The Shack Up Inn has 19 shacks, can accommodate over 100 people, and has its own live music venue that has featured legends such as Robert Plant, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello. In today's episode of Small Business War Stories, we spoke with Guy Malvezzi to learn how they got their start, why music tourism and much more.

In PX21, Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview John Henshall, an urban economist with over 40 years experience in Australia, Europe and Asia. Topics discussed include ethics, disruptive economic trends, common mistakes in economic assessments, what eastern cities can teach western cities, the revitalisation of small towns and the necessity of failure. On a personal side, John talks of his joy in being involved in the revitalisation of Clarksdale Mississippi, a pivotal place in the emergence and evolution of the blues. Music: Intro - 'Walk right up' by Ladi6. Outro - 'Mais Que Nada' Segio Mendes & Brasil 66. Podcast released in October 2016, remastered November 2017. For more details visit www.planningxchange.org.

Draft history. Race in America. A piece from 1995 reported from the Mississippi Delta

Apostle Arthur Tinberlake of Power House Ministries in Clarksdale Mississippi.       Early Morning Church Service

To experience the "essential, eccentric south" real & raw go to http://www.twistedsouth.com Mississippi based guitarslinger Lightnin Malcolm is back with his brand new album "Rough Out There" on Mississippi Indie label ShakeDown Records. The 14 originals update Malcolm's unique melodic fusion of stomping Hill Country blues with Soul, Rock, Reggae, Hip-Hop, and Country. Special guests include Grammy winning slide master Luther Dickinson and introduces T-Model Ford's grandson STUD on drums. Tracks were recorded at Dickinsons legendary Zebra Ranch studio, and at the Juke Joint Chapel (a "new" studio in the historic cotton gin on Hopson Plantation) in Clarksdale Mississippi.  

To experience the "essential, eccentric south" real & raw go to http://www.twistedsouth.com Mississippi based guitarslinger Lightnin Malcolm is back with his brand new album "Rough Out There" on Mississippi Indie label ShakeDown Records. The 14 originals update Malcolm's unique melodic fusion of stomping Hill Country blues with Soul, Rock, Reggae, Hip-Hop, and Country. Special guests include Grammy winning slide master Luther Dickinson and introduces T-Model Ford's grandson STUD on drums. Tracks were recorded at Dickinsons legendary Zebra Ranch studio, and at the Juke Joint Chapel (a "new" studio in the historic cotton gin on Hopson Plantation) in Clarksdale Mississippi.  

Apostle Arthur Timberlake of Power House Ministries in Clarksdale, Ms.  Aauthor of the book Let them Hate, Dogs don't Bark at Parked Cars. He will share what founded this book and why.

Apostle Arthur Timberlake of Power House Ministries in Clarksdale Mississippi. Apostle Arthur Timberlake is the Apostle of many houses of God, he is  a Born again Believer of Jesus Christ and I'm Non-Denominational. Apostle Timberlake's says Don't sweat the small stuff, I will never allow anyone in Society to dictate who and what I am, But, I will dictate to Society who and what I am By My Actions!! Freedom Doors Ministries, spreading the Good News of Jesus. Here on Jesus in The Morning we bring information in many different ways to our listeners, but mainly through a different speaker daily with a fresh word ...

Apostle Arthur Timberlake of Power House Ministries in Clarksdale Mississippi. A Born again Believer of Jesus Christ and Non-Denominational. He says Don't sweat the small stuff, I will never allow anyone in Society to dictate who and what I am, But, I will dictate to Society who and what I am By My Actions!!

  Apostle Arthur Timberlakes is a  born again Believer of Jesus Christ and he is  Non-Denominational. He is the Apostle of Power House Ministries in Clarksdale Mississippi. Apostle Arthur Timberlake says; I'm Saved, Sanctified, and FILLED with the Holy Ghost, Not bathed, cranktified, and filled with a phoney boast!! Freedom Doors Ministries, spreading the Good News of Jesus. Here on Jesus in The Morning we bring information in many different ways to our listeners, but mainly through a different speaker daily with a fresh word from Heaven for the day.

Apostle Arthur Timberlake Pastor and founder of Power House Ministries. He is a Born again believer, he is Saved, Sanctified, and FILLED with the Holy Ghost, Not bathed, cranktified, and filled with a phoney boast!! Freedom Doors Ministries, spreading the Good News of Jesus. Here on Jesus in The Morning we bring information in many different ways to our listeners, but mainly through a different speaker daily with a fresh word from Heaven for the day.

Apostle Arthur Timberlake of Powerhouse Ministries in Clarksdale Mississippi. Freedom Doors Ministries, spreading the Good News of Jesus. Here on Jesus in The Morning we bring information in many different ways to our listeners, but mainly through a different speaker daily with a fresh word from Heaven.

In the early 19th century, the fertile delta of northwest Mississippi gave rise to a thriving cotton industry. As White cotton planters turned profits, Blacks toiling in their fields turned to singing and hollering to lighten their load, pass the time, and communicate with each other. Early Mississippi Delta blues songs reflect Southern Blacks' struggle to cope with racial oppression, illiteracy, and poverty. As worksongs grew in length and complexity, blues music moved from the fields to juke joints. Musicians like Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson accompanied their harsh, raspy vocals (sometimes spoken rather than sung) with powerful, driving rhythms on the guitar or harmonica. The Delta blues style continues to be characterized by raw vocalizing and rhythmic intensity. In addition, Delta blues musicians often employ slide techniques, meaning they move a glass or metal tube called a slide along a guitar's strings to change the notes.